Bulgarian poet Valeri Petrov dies at 94

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Valeri Petrov, Bulgaria’s most prominent contemporary poet and a former Nobel Prize nominee who translated the complete works of Shakespeare, has died at age 94.

Petrov’s family said he died yesterday in a Sofia hospital following a stroke.

Valeri Nissim Mevorah, better known by his pen-name, Valeri Petrov, was born on April 22, 1920, in Sofia to a Jewish father and Bulgarian mother.

Besides poems, novels and translations from Russian, Italian and English, Petrov authored numerous film scripts and plays — both for adults and children.

During World War II he took part in the resistance against the pro-Nazi regime and remained close to left-wing political thought through his life.

In 1970, he clashed with the communist regime in Bulgaria after refusing to sign an official petition denouncing the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As a result, Petrov was not allowed to publish for years, so he turned to translating.